Year after year, at several different levels of command, Spring Lake failed to address systemic problems in its Police Department. This week, that failure finally forced higher authorities to intervene.
Almost two years have passed since District Attorney Ed Grannis proposed having the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office handle felony investigations for the department. About a year and a half ago an outside consultant reported, in effect, that the department was making itself up as it went along.
On Monday, Grannis and Chief District Court Judge Beth Keever took away the last of the department’s investigative authority. A department in name only, all of its misdemeanor cases were marked for dismissal.
There’s more. Two sergeants were marched away in handcuffs by agents of the State Bureau of Investigation and charged with enough crimes to keep them behind bars for decades if they’re convicted.
Is this the end of it? Nobody’s saying that. What Sheriff Moose Butler has said is that a mobile command post has been set up in the town and his deputies will be there “till the issue’s resolved.”
Alderman James O’Garra believes that things might have turned out differently if Chief A.C. Brown had resigned. Alderman Richard Higgins thinks “a lot could’ve been avoided,” especially if Town Manger Larry Faison had been more alert.
That’s the thing: Too few of the right people did the right things at the right times, and the result was a non-response that could not be ignored.
It isn’t hard to imagine how this would have played out if the department had been a business. Untrained and poorly supervised employees are evidence of a leadership problem. But Brown didn’t step aside and Faison, the new broom, could not or did not sweep clean. If there was pressure to relieve either of them, the board never made it happen.
As for Mayor Ethel Clark, who spoke as if the stumbling department’s most urgent need was to get its powers back, her gloomy reaction to this week’s upheaval may help explain things: “I never expected this.” Really.
The voters will decide Clark’s future. Restoring the department will be more complicated. One possible approach is to accept resignations from everyone, then let everyone reapply. But that would leave the screening of applicants to the chief who won’t go and the manager who kept him on even after the consultant had raked him over the coals.
We hope this is a new beginning. But that’s entirely up to Spring Lake.
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